When comparing Mark of the Old Ones vs Nethack, the Slant community recommends Nethack for most people. In the question“What are the best games on Linux?”Nethack is ranked 61st while Mark of the Old Ones is ranked 86th. The most important reason people chose Nethack is:

Nethack is a game that you can play for hundreds of hours and still not master. But you'll have tons of fun attempting to master it.

Pros

Pro

Unique, inverse kinematics-based control scheme that allows rarely seen freedom of control

By utilizing an inverse kinematics-based control scheme there is zero need for pre rendered animations for the character. It is animated real time.

Pro

Immersive, HP Lovecraft-inspired aesthetic

Mark of the Old Ones has a HP Lovecraft inspired aesthetics and graphics with the protagonist being a tendril laden creature who traverse landscapes that look fitting for any lovecraftian themed title.

Pro

Free of restrictive DRM

Without having DRM loaded into the game users can not only play the game without an internet connection but also play it on as many of their compatible devices as they like. On top of this it can also be shared with friends, just as one would have back before DRM existed.

Pro

Potential for enormous skill growth

Nethack is a game that you can play for hundreds of hours and still not master. But you'll have tons of fun attempting to master it.

Pro

Over two decades of constant development

Nethack was first released in 1987. The latest version, 3.6.0, came out in December 2015.

Pro

ASCII and tiles available

Nethack is able to run on simple ASCII graphics or use graphic tiles instead.

Pro

Depth

The gameplay is very deep due to the amount of skills and systems present in the game.

Cons

Con

Limited architecture support

Mark of the Old Ones has no plans to create or support a 32bit version of the game which will limited people who are still using older 32bit systems.

Con

Feature creep

NetHack has an overwhelming amount of features mostly because the development team found them cool at the time, but with little thought of their greater impact. For example, a Nethack staple is Sokoban as a built-in minigame, which feels out of place in a dungeon crawler.

The extremely large amount of items and abilities break the game's balance and coherence.

Con

Run of the mill story

The story of the game is pretty generic fantasy fare. It features orcs, elves, and trolls in an effort for the hero to save the world. While it does not detract from the gameplay, it does seem very familiar to those interested in the genre.

Con

Outdated controls

You need to study a wiki just to learn the most basic controls. The game is broken in this regard.

Con

Burden of knowledge

There's simply too much information that the game expects you to know before you can properly take advantage of the systems in the game.